Market slowdown – how can agents grow their business in a tough market?

The property market shows signs of slowing after a record-breaking summer, impacted by the second lockdown and fast-approaching end of the stamp duty holiday. All these issues raise questions about the first half of 2021 and the steps to taken by estate agents.

Babek Ismayil, founder of OneDome, believes that estate agencies should offset lower activity in the coming months by maximising the revenue per property sold. He says this can be achieved by generating extra revenue from complementary homebuying services such as mortgages and conveyancing.

“After a very strong summer, during which some agents may have been overwhelmed by the workload, the question now is how can they get the most out of their pipelines as the market slows down?,” says Ismayil.

“Some of the big corporate agencies and larger independents make an additional 40p for every £1 earned in commission through additional homemoving services. Of course, it’s easier for the larger agencies as they have teams dedicated to additional revenue generation, but this is part of the moving process that all agencies should be targeting,” he adds.

Hiring more people could certainly help to increase the cross-selling opportunity for estate agents, but in such uncertain times expanding the team isn’t a straightforward decision to take. Each agency office can handle a certain number of transactions per month, so how can that income be maximised without having to hire more staff?

The adoption of technology could greatly assist estate agents in capturing leads, qualifying and nurturing them, streamlining the processes and automatically cross-selling various homemoving services.

Technology can assist estate agents in achieving higher margins per transaction, making deals faster. Importantly, this can also be achieved in a compliant manner with transparency about how those fees are generated.

OneDome, the challenger portal, has built a platform assisting estate agents in generating extra revenue from homemoving services which also makes transactions faster. The platform is accessible to all agents listing on onedome.com.

Estate agents can find out more information about OneDome here.